Reflecting on the linked structure of Graveyard Girl, Lewis, recalls that she took an English course in the final for her Arts degree that focused on linked collections. It is memories from this course, she maintains, that first got her thinking about linked collections. However, initially, the stories were not connected by the school's re-creation of the royal wedding. Instead, as originally written, the stories were linked geographically, with most of them set in or around the fictional town of Lee. Again, looking back, Lewis now believes that the idea of using a major school project as the unifying element was derived from her observing her sister, a teacher-librarian, who once organized a school-wide project about the Titanic. The idea of the royal wedding came when Lewis sat down to rewrite and link the stories more closely.

In terms of the collection's structure, the delay in...